8 ms·

I'm so glad to see actual numbers for this. Time and time again I've been called delusional for saying that Android devices have more observable lag than iPhone

by kyro 13y ago

I'm so glad to see actual numbers for this. Time and time again I've been called delusional for saying that Android devices have more observable lag than iPhones. It is a very, very small component of the overall device and OS that has an enormous affect on the overall user experience, at least to me. It doesn't seem to be that big a deal to many as evident by phone sales, but it drives me absolutely nuts and is the main reason why I won't make the switch to Android.

shasta 13y ago
Agreed. The latency on the android devices I've tried prevents them from feeling real.
- rustynails77 13y ago
  It depends on the device. Some Android devices are very snappy. For example, Samsung's 7" tablet appears to be very snappy to me - and I'd be hard pressed to pick the difference between it and my iPad 3rd gen. However, there are a few Android phones that are particularly laggy. The Galaxy III comes to mind - when I last used one. It didn't feel anywhere near as responsive as my iPhone.
  - aeroevan 13y ago
    The international version or the US (LTE) variant? I have the Verizon SGS3 (albeit running CyanogenMod) and the responsiveness is very good. TouchWiz (the Samsung Android overlay) probably adds some latency and CyanogenMod uses a newer kernel (3.4.xx vs 3.0.xx) so that might also contribute to the difference...
YOSPOS 13y ago
Most Anroid customers don't value these little touches. Being able to install various ROMs and have widgets on the homescreen plus other customizations are more important to them.
- Steko 13y ago
  The fact that one platform is ahead or behind in one area isn't telling of what a mass of half a billion or a billion plus customers value or don't value.
- poolpool 13y ago
  Most apple fans don't realize that negligible differences in touch responsiveness against a small cherry picked selection of android devices doesn't make up for flexibility, cost, choice...
  - kmfrk 13y ago
    And yet you seem to confirm the parent's point by calling a 50+ ms difference negligible. :)
    - grogenaut 13y ago
      Except that your finger is bigger than that so you can't see what you're doing anyway. On ANY touch device. STYLUS (as you said) ftw. Or a mouse pointer. Infinitely small.
      - avn2109 13y ago
        To split hairs, not infinite---instead, minimum size = 1 pixel
        grogenaut 13y ago
        Agreed. To me it's either when you are at the minimum size of a numbering system with discreet quantum. Also yo ucan do a cross hair with the middle pixels empty so I guess that would be infinitely small, and a closed crosshair would be 1. :)
      - rallison 13y ago
        You are comparing size with time, which is an invalid comparison without further constraints (e.g. a visual response constrained to emanating out from the touch of a finger). Thus, you are making the assumption that all visual responses to the input of a finger will only occur directly under the real estate occupied by a finger - an assumption that I would argue is entirely unfounded in the realm of modern phones.
kmfrk 13y ago
On the other hand, I have rolled my eyes at people like Gruber who went on and on about how the iPad is totes for creation and not just consumption, and how styli are stupid - after spending time with my iPad and trying to draw and "touch write" in apps myself. Apple makes great devices, and I wouldn't use any other phone and tablet, but I think people like Gruber have been completely blind to the technological shortcomings of iOS devices in this area, because Steve Jobs told them styli are stupid, and the iPad is going to disrupt this-and-that. It also brings up the whole "to stylus or not to stylus" discussion again, because one of the main reasons you wouldn't want to use a stylus for an iPad is that it highlights just how (comparatively) poor the touch latency is for the tasks that lend themselves to work with styli. It perhaps best underscores that iPads are very much - still - disruptive technology, which by definition is in many ways inferior than sustaining technologies, but makes up for it in other compelling ways. It's one of the many reminders that we shouldn't get too busy throwing out everything paper and analogue. Disruption is not synonymous with obviation.
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  What about "stylus when you need it" a-la galaxy note?
  - kmfrk 13y ago
    I love styli; I own several for my iPad. I'm just saying that Apple have a good reason to discourage people from using styli with their iPad, for reasons other than the new finger-based touch paradigm. (As it exposes inherent shortcomings.) I don't fault Apple and Jobs for that, though; I am just bothered by Gruber's rather naïve praise and uncompromising defence of the iPad as a device for creation over consumption, an argument I think he more than Apple and anyone else champions.
    - dreamfactory 13y ago
      I'll second that the ipad is a great creation device but just not for proper stylus based creation - some paint styles, most drawing, and any handwriting. But it is good for more common creative applications - a lot of photo apps, music, keyboard-based writing. If Apple also made a stylus-based product I'd get it in a heartbeat (because ironically it's weakest as a paper notebook replacement for meetings and sketching ideas), but if I had to choose between those types of creative applications, there's more mileage in the ipad.
bbgm 13y ago
One of my biggest uses for the ipad is as a control surface for synthesizers (via Lemur). You need a high precision screen. There is a reason iOS devices are popular as control surfaces and synthesizers. And just for those who care, Rheyne does a phenomenal job of using iPads as controllers (http://vimeo.com/72861463 http://vimeo.com/72861463)
b0z0 13y ago
It's indisputably obvious how much better the iPhone screen is than other platforms. How is, for example, the difference in menu scrolling not apparent? I can't believe we needed a study to realize that. And this is coming from someone who's never had an iDevice in his life, just Android and Windows.
- gknoy 13y ago
  The reason it isn't apparent is that most people do not have the opportunity to really compare the two phones side-by side, with everyday actions: swapping between apps, swiping menus or notifications, etc, and so VERY few people get to really experience the nice things about one platform that the other doesn't do well, and vice-versa.
  - snogglethorpe 13y ago
    I don't think it's that rare... people often have multiple devices. I have an Android phone and an ipad. It's very clear after a little use that the ipad is "snappier" (and animations are smoother etc), but iOS also feels very very limiting by comparison with Android. There are so many little things that Android just does right, that iOS...doesn't. So which is more important, smoothness or functionality? I suppose it depends on the person and how they use the device... but really, I'd like both... :]
    - sbuk 13y ago
      > There are so many little things that Android just does right, that iOS... doesn't. Namely..?
      - piyush_soni 13y ago
        Besides the things iPhone copied blatantly from Android phones (Notification center, 'Today', Quick toggle settings panel, new multi-shot camera etc.), you have: 100 things iPhone 5s-5s can't do that Android can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVTrazT99Ps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVTrazT99Ps
alixr 13y ago
Agree and disagree. The touch screen is the most important aspect of a touchscreen device. Observable lag affects the user experience when they're moving faster than the device will allow. It is a big deal but I don't think the majority of users are bothered because they see it as an inherent trait of a computer to lag.
- gfodor 13y ago
  I guess this is the difference. Android users are using computers. iPhone users are manipulating things under glass.
  - untog 13y ago
    That makes absolutely no sense.
    - gfodor 13y ago
      the latency on android gives the phones the feeling of using a computer. the lack of latency on ios gives phones the feeling of actually manipulating things on the screen.
      - mdwrigh2 13y ago
        iOS latency is still well above what's noticable by human perception. Tack on to that all of the delays you get once you're running a newer version of iOS on older devices (which I suspect is the majority of people using Apple products) and I think it's pretty obvious that there's less of a gap in how people perceive the interaction model than you're suggesting.
modeless 13y ago
I'm glad to see numbers on this too. Hardware benchmarks like this are nice because they can capture end-to-end latency, but they're difficult to run. If you want to easily capture some latency numbers yourself, I've been working on an all-software benchmark for input latency: http://google.github.io/latency-benchmark http://google.github.io/latency-benchmark
sp332 13y ago
There's a certain amount of lag I can get used to with Android. I noticed that upgrading from 4.1 to 4.2.2 didn't eliminate the lag, but it reduced it to being much more usable. I used a WP8 phone for a while, and I found that even though the swooshy animations can take a relatively long time to complete, it was so responsive in starting an animation that it was hard to go back to Android.
- kllrnohj 13y ago
  According to this test WP8 isn't any better than Android. Well, specifically the Lumia 928 isn't any better than the Galaxy S4. Need to be specific about which device, since we're almost exclusively talking about hardware here (touch controller, GPU, and display controller) - the OS isn't doing much.
  - damien 13y ago
    Are you sure? The article doesn't seem to say whether it's a hardware or software issue, and the iphone's hardware parts aren't exactly secret proprietary stuff... I mean the Galaxy S4 is supposed to have the better PowerVR GPU for example. I'm thinking the difference is in the software stack, I think you'd be surprised at how much code gets run between the time there's an input event and an app reacts to it on the screen. Anyways, it'd be interesting to know if running Android on an iphone showed the same delays.
    - modeless 13y ago
      The hardware that matters here is not the GPU. It's the touchscreen controller, the display controller, the associated firmware, and to a lesser extent the drivers for those. All either Apple proprietary or heavily customized.
      - mdwrigh2 13y ago
        The GPU can matter as well. On the Nexus 10, for example, the fill rate is pretty low compared to the screen size, so applications have to be very very careful not to exceed the limit or they'll end up adding frames of latency (which looks like touch or interaction latency). But in general you're right, those are the components that contribute the large majority touch latency to a device.
doomlaser 13y ago
For comparison, here's another set of benchmarks from a guy who appears to use the same methodology (240fps camera, count frames between input and screen response in custom lightweight apps). http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-colors-why-game-devices-are-better-for-games-than-smart-phones-2/ http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-co... iPhone 5: 81 ms Galaxy S3: 104 ms Galaxy Note: 71 ms Nintendo 3DS: 23 ms PS Vita: 49 ms And, to add a tv game console into the mix, apparently the latency between input on a PS3 wireless controller and home screen interaction is also about 50 ms. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_responsiveness_in_video_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_respons...
- swebs 13y ago
  Its interesting that the Wii U touchscreen has 53ms latency while the 3DS only has 23ms.
  - candydance 13y ago
    At a guess, the Wii U touchscreen is bigger so the scanning frequency would drop if they are both using the same tech.
    - joezydeco 13y ago
      Resistive screens don't need to be scanned like capacitive ones. The moment you make contact on a resistive film the controller can detect the resistance change and perform the A-D conversion. There's more latency in the host communication traffic than the conversion.
- msoad 13y ago
  Now I want to know delay of trackpad on a Macbook Pro.
  - notaddicted 13y ago
    I've got no direct knowledge of this in particular but I've heard that the mouse movement is one of the highest level interrupts in the OS and won't be preempted -- so the number is probably very small but the response by the application when you click may be longer. Also, this is why sometimes you'll see the entire computer locked up except for the mouse movement.
blinkingled 13y ago
The Android numbers from the OP are just for few devices - for e.g. the Tegra devices with DirectTouch aren't included. Also from another post above the Note has better latency than iPhone 5. If you want to go Android - you can mostly get what you want :)
- berntb 13y ago
  >>If you want to go Android - you can mostly get what you want :) As long as multiple requirements are met in a single device. For instance, if you want regular O/S upgrades you have about as many Android phones to choose between as there are iPhone models :-)
  - crander 13y ago
    I have a Samsung Captivate, an iPhone 4 and a Nexus S (developer phone) all purchased in Q4 2010. Nexus S updated until 4.1, iPhone is still current with iOS 7 and the Captivate got ONE update (manually via USB) from 2.1 to 2.2... the Software Update NEVER updated.
    - bookface 13y ago
      I had this same experience. In 2010, I decided to buy the Captivate over the iPhone 4 after reading a bunch of reviews online. IIRC, I bought it right when it was released, which almost exactly coincided with the release of Froyo. After four or so months of putting up with a laggy interface, cheap (feeling) build quality, and no software updates in sight, I sold it and finally bought that iPhone 4, which I used for the next 3 years. Recently, I decided to give Android another try and went with the Galaxy S4 when that came out. I was pleased with how far the OS had come since Eclair, but it still felt less responsive than even my 3-year-old iPhone. As for the build quality, that's my biggest regret in buying a Samsung product again. It's hard to beat the feel of an Apple device, but at least the Nexus 4 and HTC One are trying.
  - NicoJuicy 13y ago
    I have cyanogenmod. Updates every day and according to recent news, they are expanding for non-technical users. Hell, even a friend of mine who doesn't have any it-background installed it without a problem :)
pintglass 13y ago
Agreed!
demodifier 13y ago
Just like the pixel density of an image, beyond a certain value, makes no difference to the human eye, perhaps the touch screen response time also gets perceived only up to a certain speed. Any faster and it makes no difference. Outliers with above average visual capability do perceive things differently and maybe you have a similar ability with respect to noticing touch screen response times. That might explain why most people don't care so much. Just theorising here, but if anybody has any numbers, it would be good.
- cbr 13y ago
  These latency numbers are around the border of minimum perceptible visual latency, which is somewhere around 100ms (http://stackoverflow.com/a/2547903/547213 http://stackoverflow.com/a/2547903/547213) A difference between between 55ms and 123ms is enough to matter.
antr 13y ago
This is the reason why I changed my Android for an iPhone.
wslh 13y ago
There are a lot of things to learn from Apple: I don't [want to] understand why browsing Internet in the iPad Mini is smoother than in my high end notebook. Why my iPhone 1 browsing experience was better than the Samsung S2.
mmagin 13y ago
Although I periodically am annoyed at Apple for various things, it's frequently clear to me that they understand that certain aspects of the user experience are really important. Much of their competition treats user experience just like any other consumer electronics company: If it doesn't crash, ship it!
code_duck 13y ago
Compare any two drum set applications - no drumming skill needed - on even a high end Android device vs a 4 Gen iPod Touch and the iPod has much better response aurally. In fact, Android instruments are universally so laugh they are unplayable. If there is a usable android drum program/hardware combo I'd like to see it... So far, I don't know why people even make instrument apps for android other than sequencers.

by kyro 13y ago

shasta 13y ago

Agreed. The latency on the android devices I've tried prevents them from feeling real.

rustynails77 13y ago
It depends on the device. Some Android devices are very snappy. For example, Samsung's 7" tablet appears to be very snappy to me - and I'd be hard pressed to pick the difference between it and my iPad 3rd gen. However, there are a few Android phones that are particularly laggy. The Galaxy III comes to mind - when I last used one. It didn't feel anywhere near as responsive as my iPhone.
- aeroevan 13y ago
  The international version or the US (LTE) variant? I have the Verizon SGS3 (albeit running CyanogenMod) and the responsiveness is very good. TouchWiz (the Samsung Android overlay) probably adds some latency and CyanogenMod uses a newer kernel (3.4.xx vs 3.0.xx) so that might also contribute to the difference...

YOSPOS 13y ago

Most Anroid customers don't value these little touches. Being able to install various ROMs and have widgets on the homescreen plus other customizations are more important to them.

Steko 13y ago
The fact that one platform is ahead or behind in one area isn't telling of what a mass of half a billion or a billion plus customers value or don't value.
poolpool 13y ago
Most apple fans don't realize that negligible differences in touch responsiveness against a small cherry picked selection of android devices doesn't make up for flexibility, cost, choice...
- kmfrk 13y ago
  And yet you seem to confirm the parent's point by calling a 50+ ms difference negligible. :)
  - grogenaut 13y ago
    Except that your finger is bigger than that so you can't see what you're doing anyway. On ANY touch device. STYLUS (as you said) ftw. Or a mouse pointer. Infinitely small.
    - avn2109 13y ago
      To split hairs, not infinite---instead, minimum size = 1 pixel
      - grogenaut 13y ago
        Agreed. To me it's either when you are at the minimum size of a numbering system with discreet quantum. Also yo ucan do a cross hair with the middle pixels empty so I guess that would be infinitely small, and a closed crosshair would be 1. :)
    - rallison 13y ago
      You are comparing size with time, which is an invalid comparison without further constraints (e.g. a visual response constrained to emanating out from the touch of a finger). Thus, you are making the assumption that all visual responses to the input of a finger will only occur directly under the real estate occupied by a finger - an assumption that I would argue is entirely unfounded in the realm of modern phones.

kmfrk 13y ago

On the other hand, I have rolled my eyes at people like Gruber who went on and on about how the iPad is totes for creation and not just consumption, and how styli are stupid - after spending time with my iPad and trying to draw and "touch write" in apps myself. Apple makes great devices, and I wouldn't use any other phone and tablet, but I think people like Gruber have been completely blind to the technological shortcomings of iOS devices in this area, because Steve Jobs told them styli are stupid, and the iPad is going to disrupt this-and-that. It also brings up the whole "to stylus or not to stylus" discussion again, because one of the main reasons you wouldn't want to use a stylus for an iPad is that it highlights just how (comparatively) poor the touch latency is for the tasks that lend themselves to work with styli. It perhaps best underscores that iPads are very much - still - disruptive technology, which by definition is in many ways inferior than sustaining technologies, but makes up for it in other compelling ways. It's one of the many reminders that we shouldn't get too busy throwing out everything paper and analogue. Disruption is not synonymous with obviation.

hayksaakian 13y ago
What about "stylus when you need it" a-la galaxy note?
- kmfrk 13y ago
  I love styli; I own several for my iPad. I'm just saying that Apple have a good reason to discourage people from using styli with their iPad, for reasons other than the new finger-based touch paradigm. (As it exposes inherent shortcomings.) I don't fault Apple and Jobs for that, though; I am just bothered by Gruber's rather naïve praise and uncompromising defence of the iPad as a device for creation over consumption, an argument I think he more than Apple and anyone else champions.
  - dreamfactory 13y ago
    I'll second that the ipad is a great creation device but just not for proper stylus based creation - some paint styles, most drawing, and any handwriting. But it is good for more common creative applications - a lot of photo apps, music, keyboard-based writing. If Apple also made a stylus-based product I'd get it in a heartbeat (because ironically it's weakest as a paper notebook replacement for meetings and sketching ideas), but if I had to choose between those types of creative applications, there's more mileage in the ipad.

bbgm 13y ago

One of my biggest uses for the ipad is as a control surface for synthesizers (via Lemur). You need a high precision screen. There is a reason iOS devices are popular as control surfaces and synthesizers. And just for those who care, Rheyne does a phenomenal job of using iPads as controllers (http://vimeo.com/72861463 http://vimeo.com/72861463)

b0z0 13y ago

It's indisputably obvious how much better the iPhone screen is than other platforms. How is, for example, the difference in menu scrolling not apparent? I can't believe we needed a study to realize that. And this is coming from someone who's never had an iDevice in his life, just Android and Windows.

gknoy 13y ago
The reason it isn't apparent is that most people do not have the opportunity to really compare the two phones side-by side, with everyday actions: swapping between apps, swiping menus or notifications, etc, and so VERY few people get to really experience the nice things about one platform that the other doesn't do well, and vice-versa.
- snogglethorpe 13y ago
  I don't think it's that rare... people often have multiple devices. I have an Android phone and an ipad. It's very clear after a little use that the ipad is "snappier" (and animations are smoother etc), but iOS also feels very very limiting by comparison with Android. There are so many little things that Android just does right, that iOS...doesn't. So which is more important, smoothness or functionality? I suppose it depends on the person and how they use the device... but really, I'd like both... :]
  - sbuk 13y ago
    > There are so many little things that Android just does right, that iOS... doesn't. Namely..?
    - piyush_soni 13y ago
      Besides the things iPhone copied blatantly from Android phones (Notification center, 'Today', Quick toggle settings panel, new multi-shot camera etc.), you have: 100 things iPhone 5s-5s can't do that Android can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVTrazT99Ps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVTrazT99Ps

alixr 13y ago

Agree and disagree. The touch screen is the most important aspect of a touchscreen device. Observable lag affects the user experience when they're moving faster than the device will allow. It is a big deal but I don't think the majority of users are bothered because they see it as an inherent trait of a computer to lag.

gfodor 13y ago
I guess this is the difference. Android users are using computers. iPhone users are manipulating things under glass.
- untog 13y ago
  That makes absolutely no sense.
  - gfodor 13y ago
    the latency on android gives the phones the feeling of using a computer. the lack of latency on ios gives phones the feeling of actually manipulating things on the screen.
    - mdwrigh2 13y ago
      iOS latency is still well above what's noticable by human perception. Tack on to that all of the delays you get once you're running a newer version of iOS on older devices (which I suspect is the majority of people using Apple products) and I think it's pretty obvious that there's less of a gap in how people perceive the interaction model than you're suggesting.

modeless 13y ago

I'm glad to see numbers on this too. Hardware benchmarks like this are nice because they can capture end-to-end latency, but they're difficult to run. If you want to easily capture some latency numbers yourself, I've been working on an all-software benchmark for input latency: http://google.github.io/latency-benchmark http://google.github.io/latency-benchmark

sp332 13y ago

There's a certain amount of lag I can get used to with Android. I noticed that upgrading from 4.1 to 4.2.2 didn't eliminate the lag, but it reduced it to being much more usable. I used a WP8 phone for a while, and I found that even though the swooshy animations can take a relatively long time to complete, it was so responsive in starting an animation that it was hard to go back to Android.

kllrnohj 13y ago
According to this test WP8 isn't any better than Android. Well, specifically the Lumia 928 isn't any better than the Galaxy S4. Need to be specific about which device, since we're almost exclusively talking about hardware here (touch controller, GPU, and display controller) - the OS isn't doing much.
- damien 13y ago
  Are you sure? The article doesn't seem to say whether it's a hardware or software issue, and the iphone's hardware parts aren't exactly secret proprietary stuff... I mean the Galaxy S4 is supposed to have the better PowerVR GPU for example. I'm thinking the difference is in the software stack, I think you'd be surprised at how much code gets run between the time there's an input event and an app reacts to it on the screen. Anyways, it'd be interesting to know if running Android on an iphone showed the same delays.
  - modeless 13y ago
    The hardware that matters here is not the GPU. It's the touchscreen controller, the display controller, the associated firmware, and to a lesser extent the drivers for those. All either Apple proprietary or heavily customized.
    - mdwrigh2 13y ago
      The GPU can matter as well. On the Nexus 10, for example, the fill rate is pretty low compared to the screen size, so applications have to be very very careful not to exceed the limit or they'll end up adding frames of latency (which looks like touch or interaction latency). But in general you're right, those are the components that contribute the large majority touch latency to a device.

doomlaser 13y ago

For comparison, here's another set of benchmarks from a guy who appears to use the same methodology (240fps camera, count frames between input and screen response in custom lightweight apps). http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-colors-why-game-devices-are-better-for-games-than-smart-phones-2/ http://www.collectingsmiles.com/news/measuring-latency-in-co... iPhone 5: 81 ms Galaxy S3: 104 ms Galaxy Note: 71 ms Nintendo 3DS: 23 ms PS Vita: 49 ms And, to add a tv game console into the mix, apparently the latency between input on a PS3 wireless controller and home screen interaction is also about 50 ms. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_responsiveness_in_video_.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3725/measuring_respons...

swebs 13y ago
Its interesting that the Wii U touchscreen has 53ms latency while the 3DS only has 23ms.
- candydance 13y ago
  At a guess, the Wii U touchscreen is bigger so the scanning frequency would drop if they are both using the same tech.
  - joezydeco 13y ago
    Resistive screens don't need to be scanned like capacitive ones. The moment you make contact on a resistive film the controller can detect the resistance change and perform the A-D conversion. There's more latency in the host communication traffic than the conversion.
msoad 13y ago
Now I want to know delay of trackpad on a Macbook Pro.
- notaddicted 13y ago
  I've got no direct knowledge of this in particular but I've heard that the mouse movement is one of the highest level interrupts in the OS and won't be preempted -- so the number is probably very small but the response by the application when you click may be longer. Also, this is why sometimes you'll see the entire computer locked up except for the mouse movement.

blinkingled 13y ago

The Android numbers from the OP are just for few devices - for e.g. the Tegra devices with DirectTouch aren't included. Also from another post above the Note has better latency than iPhone 5. If you want to go Android - you can mostly get what you want :)

berntb 13y ago
>>If you want to go Android - you can mostly get what you want :) As long as multiple requirements are met in a single device. For instance, if you want regular O/S upgrades you have about as many Android phones to choose between as there are iPhone models :-)
- crander 13y ago
  I have a Samsung Captivate, an iPhone 4 and a Nexus S (developer phone) all purchased in Q4 2010. Nexus S updated until 4.1, iPhone is still current with iOS 7 and the Captivate got ONE update (manually via USB) from 2.1 to 2.2... the Software Update NEVER updated.
  - bookface 13y ago
    I had this same experience. In 2010, I decided to buy the Captivate over the iPhone 4 after reading a bunch of reviews online. IIRC, I bought it right when it was released, which almost exactly coincided with the release of Froyo. After four or so months of putting up with a laggy interface, cheap (feeling) build quality, and no software updates in sight, I sold it and finally bought that iPhone 4, which I used for the next 3 years. Recently, I decided to give Android another try and went with the Galaxy S4 when that came out. I was pleased with how far the OS had come since Eclair, but it still felt less responsive than even my 3-year-old iPhone. As for the build quality, that's my biggest regret in buying a Samsung product again. It's hard to beat the feel of an Apple device, but at least the Nexus 4 and HTC One are trying.
- NicoJuicy 13y ago
  I have cyanogenmod. Updates every day and according to recent news, they are expanding for non-technical users. Hell, even a friend of mine who doesn't have any it-background installed it without a problem :)

pintglass 13y ago

Agreed!

demodifier 13y ago

Just like the pixel density of an image, beyond a certain value, makes no difference to the human eye, perhaps the touch screen response time also gets perceived only up to a certain speed. Any faster and it makes no difference. Outliers with above average visual capability do perceive things differently and maybe you have a similar ability with respect to noticing touch screen response times. That might explain why most people don't care so much. Just theorising here, but if anybody has any numbers, it would be good.

cbr 13y ago
These latency numbers are around the border of minimum perceptible visual latency, which is somewhere around 100ms (http://stackoverflow.com/a/2547903/547213 http://stackoverflow.com/a/2547903/547213) A difference between between 55ms and 123ms is enough to matter.

antr 13y ago

This is the reason why I changed my Android for an iPhone.

wslh 13y ago

There are a lot of things to learn from Apple: I don't [want to] understand why browsing Internet in the iPad Mini is smoother than in my high end notebook. Why my iPhone 1 browsing experience was better than the Samsung S2.

mmagin 13y ago

Although I periodically am annoyed at Apple for various things, it's frequently clear to me that they understand that certain aspects of the user experience are really important. Much of their competition treats user experience just like any other consumer electronics company: If it doesn't crash, ship it!

code_duck 13y ago

Compare any two drum set applications - no drumming skill needed - on even a high end Android device vs a 4 Gen iPod Touch and the iPod has much better response aurally. In fact, Android instruments are universally so laugh they are unplayable. If there is a usable android drum program/hardware combo I'd like to see it... So far, I don't know why people even make instrument apps for android other than sequencers.